Reading the news: my column in Expansión
My column this week in Expansión, Spain’s leading financial daily, is called “Reading the news” (pdf in Spanish), and uses Flipboard’s purchase of Zite to illustrate the changes in the way we read news on the web—notably via a larger range of sources—while also looking at the absurd concept of charging sources of traffic for the use of headlines and fragments of stories. A recent manifesto written by Paul Williams refers to this: A manifesto for newsroom decision makers: focus on how people get to your news site.
As the web develops, so do its users, and they have largely moved on from the one-way street of accessing a single news website, typically that of their favorite daily, to using the social networks based on a range of criteria, or even aesthetics or convenience. Flipboard, for example, manages magazines through channels assigned to each source, or based on aggregations decided by the author of each magazine, and formatted with a superimposed headline.
There is any number of models. Techmeme uses six human editors to select and filter technology news from a range of sources, grouped under themes along with its own advertising format that aim to offer added value while respectful of the user. On my Flipboard magazine, for example, you can access (and more than 4,500 people do so routinely) technology-related news compiled from more than 50 sources and grouped according to what I think is interesting at the moment on the tech scene. Each of the links, headlines, and photographs included in the publication provides access to the original content, and none of them have so far considered asking for royalty payments.
Zite is an intuitive recommendations app that learns from the user and sources content from a wide range of sites. Once again, the idea that those sites would demand a royalty payment for directing readers to their sites makes no sense. In fact, the logical thing for news providers to do is join these kind of mechanisms, such as CNN has done, purchasing Zite in 2011, and which it is now selling to Flipboard.
It’s the same story with Spain’s Menéame, or Google News, and every other news aggregator around the world. It makes no sense to impose a charge for using a news source, as the Spanish government intends to do. Converting the web into a “pay me because I typed that headline first” system shows a total lack of understanding of how the web has always worked, and will simply lead to the setting up of customs points where they never existed before and where they shouldn’t be now or in the future. If the Association of Spanish Newspaper Publishers (AEDE) insists on pressuring the government for a charge aimed solely at supporting its unsustainable business model, the only thing it will achieve, other than damaging its reputation, is that Google News will stop operating in Spain, Menéame will relocate to another country, and fewer people will visit AEDE members’ web sites. The body has much to lose, and little to gain from pursuing this.
Below, the text in full:
Reading the news
An interesting event took place this week that could have major repercussions for news aggregators: Flipboard has bought Zite from CNN. Flipboard is an application originally designed for tablets and cellphones, and subsequently a version for computers, based on a very attractive and easy to use interface that produces something that looks very much like a traditional format magazine, with pages that can be turned, and large photographs with a headline superimposed over it that links to the story in the original publication.
It is a way of flipping through the news in a visually attractive format based on themes, and has attracted a readership of some 100 million, growing at a rate of 250,000 people a day, and with an estimated worth of $800 million.
Zite is similar, but also includes a recommendation engine: if you have liked a particular story, it provides a link to a related item that might be of interest to you. CNN bought Zite for $20 million in 2011, and is now selling it to Flipboard for around $60 million.
The web is increasingly a place where information circulates. Flipboard and Zite compile information produced by third parties: they do their job well, collecting images and headlines, and then organizing them for their readers. Techeme is a virtual compiler of technology news, and has a team of expert editors who select headlines and fragments for a wide range of sources.
News consumption has changed drastically over the last decade, and we no longer tend to source what we read from one place. The majority of us now use the social networks, or use value added tools that aggregate and compile things for us to read, again from a wide range of sources. A normal process of evolution that is creating value for everybody, and one that should prompt readers to ask themselves where they read the news these days…
(En español, aquí)
